Sculptor Antony Gormley talks to Roya Nikkhah about his 'living
monument', due to be unveiled on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth next week
- and the members of the public rising to the occasion.

Walking into Antony Gormley's studio beyond the wastelands north of King's Cross is an assault on the senses. An intimidating security gate rolls back to reveal a vast white building sheltering a host of assistants hammering, clanging and sawing away at his latest masterpieces from behind their earphones and fibreglass protection masks.

Sparks fly everywhere and the sound is deafening. Huge abstract pieces of twisted metal swing from the ceiling like giant chandeliers and the floor space is filled with Gormley's iconic iron men, or "Gorms" – the lifesize casts of Gormley that sell for up to £2 million and have made his work among the most recognisable pieces of art in the world. From behind one of these steel wire Gorms, the man himself emerges, imposingly tall and dressed all in white, save for sturdy black boots.

For his latest work, Gormley has put metal aside and chosen to work with human flesh on a "living monument". Next week he will unveil the One & Other project on Trafalgar Square's empty Fourth Plinth, where over 100 days and nights, a fork-lift truck will lift a mixed bag of Britons on to the seven-metre high plinth every hour, "to perform, to demonstrate, or simply to reflect".

"I couldn't really continue to use myself as a test ground so I thought I'd see if I could get statues of lots of people on the plinth," he explains. "But then I realised it would be silly to make sculptures and much more fun to put real people up there. Here is this old plinth, full of old ideas about what constitutes a statue – elevated and idealised – and the rest of us, by mere implication of being beneath, are lesser beings. So I thought it would be an interesting experience to see what it feels like to be rather high, rather alone, and rather isolated in a very public place, exposed to the world's gaze.

"Trafalgar Square is a position for national heroes, where the machinery of established values whirrs away. So I thought let's try and question this English obsession with heritage and values – let's have a real person up there who hasn't ever been idealised or idolised and see what happens. It's about what you think, feel or do when…" he trails off. When you are put on the spot? "Yes, exactly, when you're on the spot."

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More than 14,000 people have so far applied to take part in the project, with participants chosen at random by a computer, which is programmed to select an equal number of men and women and to find candidates from as wide a geographical spread as possible.

The first 615 volunteers who will have their one hour of fame have been selected. They include Gwynneth Pedler, 83, the oldest "plinther" selected so far who plans to ascend in her wheelchair and signal messages with semaphore flags. Then there is Oliver Parsons-Barker, 26, an aquatic scientist who wants to highlight the global shortage of clean water by dressing in a "poo costume", and Hannah Pringle, a 20-year-old student who will celebrate her birthday on the plinth with cake. During his 10pm slot, David Rosenberg, a 41-year-old architect, will mount his pink, folding bike and pedal to power a specially designed pink-lighted suit.

"It's not about being asked to behave in a special way," Gormley insists. "All that's being asked is to go up there and be yourself. It's not about 'doing', it's about 'being'. The unpredictability of what people might do is one of the most exciting things. When it's windy and raining at 2am, and it's just you up there, it will be tough. And then you'll have the passers-by who will yell 'Oi, you up there, who do you think you are?', it will be quite a challenge."

It is, he admits, a cheeky idea, which he still can't believe he managed to get past the health and safety police (vast nets under the plinth should prevent any mishaps). "I never thought I'd be allowed to do it because it's mad and it doesn't fall into any known box of social organisation," he chuckles. When pitching the idea to the Mayor of London's office who decide on the Fourth Plinth, he could see them thinking: "Is it an art work, an event, a performance, all of them, none of them?"

Though he has applied to take his place on the plinth, Gormley himself has missed out on the first-round selection. Dame Judi Dench, the broadcaster Jon Snow and the poet Benjamin Zephaniah are among aspiring plinthers to whom the computer has also said no. "Celebrities are not barred but we're trying to avoid all of that. I imagine there will be one or two people who will be better known than others." A secretive smile – he isn't saying who.

Some critics have sniffed at One & Other calling it a "Facebook" work of art; others accuse him of borrowing an idea rooted in television shows like Big Brother. "There's no competition in it, we're not asking people to vote anyone off the plinth," says Gormley. "It's very important that nobody's being judged. It's extraordinary how quickly that convention has established itself. This is very different. We're trying to honour the individual."

Competition, especially in art, makes Gormley uncomfortable. In 1994, he won the Turner Prize with Field For The British Isles, a room full of 40,000 miniature terracotta figures made by a community project in St Helen's, Merseyside. Most Turner Prize-winners speak of their elation at being honoured with such a prestigious prize; Gormley said he felt "embarrassed and guilty to have won" and compared the experience to being a Holocaust survivor. "In the moment of winning, there is a sense that others have been diminished," he said.

Gormley, 59, lives in north London with his wife, Vicken, also an artist. They have three children: Ivo, a film-maker, Paloma, a Cambridge architecture graduate, and Guy, who is studying art at Goldsmiths.

The youngest of seven children, Gormley grew up in a mansion in Hampstead, north London, before his father, an Irish millionaire businessman and devout Catholic, packed him off to Ampleforth College, the Benedictine boarding school in Yorkshire. Then it was Trinity College, Cambridge, a brief stint on the hippie trail in India, followed by the Central School of Art, Goldsmiths and the Slade. Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate, who gave him his first major show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1982, has been one of his staunchest supporters. So all very establishment.

But Gormley has shied away from the tradition of showing his works in galleries, instead filling landscapes, not museums, with his works. Around 33 million motorists a year drive past the gargantuan steel wings of Angel of the North on the A1 in Gateshead, and hundreds of thousands have experienced Another Place, 100 life-sized human figures installed on Crosby beach in Merseyside. So is his work a deliberate attempt to open up art to the masses? And do we even need museums to appreciate "art"?

"There is a view now that somehow, art aspires to the condition of the museum because it gives it a validity. The museum is about history and gathering together things that have had a life, and seeing how they fit alongside other things – almost a vision of the past. That's a very useful thing, but I think work should be in the world first, and should have earned its place in a living experience in time. That our art has become institutionalised worries me."

Are there any spaces left he would like to conquer? "The desert," he replies. "I'm hoping to put 100 sculptures in the Alps next year, and I've worked in the Arctic, but I would love to make a piece in the desert. The Gobi would be good."

Having used his own body as subject, tool and material for most of his career, it is rumoured that a series of "Gorms" to be erected along the Water of Leith in Edinburgh over the summer may be his last metal men. "Well, never say never, but I very much look forward to the time where I don't have to wrap myself up in Clingfilm. I really should find something better to do."

* One & Other begins in Trafalgar Square, London on July 6. For details on how to participate, visit www.oneandother.co.uk